January « 2010 « Hackcorp

Affiliate taxes, thinking out loud

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing — rasim

More and more states start to introduce the affiliate tax. Seems like its a pretty hot topic as one state after another is bringing it out. There are a ton of updates on twitter, blogs and forums. Geno from AM Navigator just wrote about Vermont joining the list along with a brief update and links to the posts for the other states.

Now, why do these bills matter? Who cares if people pay sales tax on the items they buy online or not? Tax-free shipping is one of the top reasons why people shop online. It drives sales and helps to offset shipping charges and keep the prices low. Theoretically, online retailers are not supposed to charge tax on items shipped to the states in which they have no physical presence. The new tax bills define affiliates as “contractors” working for these online retailers in the state and this is how they try to justify the presence for the most part.

As for the thoughts, I think it will hurt the states more as they are just killing affiliate businesses and will end up losing tax dollars that these businesses could have earned. It looks like it is more profitable to terminate “tax state” affiliates then start collecting taxes in these states and these is what online retailers have been doing. Some say – well, this is why Circuit City got closed, which I think is a crap. Circuit City has always been struggling to compete with Best Buy and Wal Mart. They tried to charge and save every penny possible, just like these “tax states” do. Cheaper unskilled labor, higher prices, crappier service – that’s what killed them… Best Buy reported profits while Circuit City was slowly going out of business and thinking of opening up “The City” instead of focusing on improving their service. By the way, in case you did not know, online division of Circuit City is still selling. They actually have better email marketing now , but I think that the prices still suck comparing to new egg and amazon. Even if online merchants had something to do with the closing of Circuit City stores, what are these states trying to do? They are not going to get sales tax from them anyway, just lose more people who actually make money and pay taxes on the money earned. Will they drive more sales to local stores? I doubt that it will be noticeable. Affiliate marketers will shift the focus, move, do anything they can to keep working with these merchants…

The opportunity will still be there for some states. For instance, Amazon already charges sales tax for Washington residents and since I live here, it makes sense for me to keep working with Amazon since if Washington tax bill ever passes, it will not affect Washington affiliates. It makes sense for Utah affiliates to keep investing in their Overstock.com affiliate sites, California affiliates – newegg, etc. However, what would you do if you work with all of these merchants and do not want to lose a big chunk of earnings? Move to another state? How can you be certain that the other state will stay away from the bill? At this point I can only think of states like Oregon where there is no sales tax… Let’s all move to Portland! Just kidding, but not really.

Now, would you be pissed if you would have put years of SEO/Development/Design/Brand Building work into your affiliate site around a merchant and received an email saying that the merchant is done with your state? Some can lose a significant portion of the income and it would just make sense to move out to another state. “Tax states” may lose in a long term. America may end up losing in a long term too. Imagine if you did all the work moving to another state which would change something because of the budget deficit too… All the work for nothing? Oh well, time to move to Canada… or India… or whatever… May be… May be not… Just thinking…

Most affiliates I know do not work with just one merchant and wouldn’t move to Washington just because Amazon is here. However, as I said in the interview with Murray Newlands a few days ago, I see the growth in local and international affiliate marketing. I already have a few landing pages for the local retailer and will probably put more effort into Amazon since I am not planning to move anywhere yet. International market is cheap, not too many merchants want to go there yet, but it is a growing market.

There are a lot of changes in affiliate marketing industry. It gets harder and harder. Sometimes I am thinking to shift all of my focus to web development, but I don’t want to drop something that I just started…

Anyway, just personal thoughts out loud…

01.30.10

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Colorado finance committee passes affiliate tax bill

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing — rasim

Seems that Colorado is getting closer with a 6-5 vote to join New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island in passing affiliate tax bill HB 1193. Overstock.com sent emails to Colorado affiliates earlier saying that they will sever relationships with the state affiliates if the bill passes, just like they did in the other 3 states. A few other companies will follow. I wonder what would the majority of Overstock affiliates in Colorado do and if the bill will help the state.

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Affiliate Summit West 2010 and my first trip to Vegas

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Other — rasim

Since I have never been to Las Vegas before, I decided to book a few extra days to relax. I arrived a few days before the event and we celebrated my wife’s birthday there. Two days were enough time to check out the strip, gamble a bit, check out some clubs and restaurants and just enjoy the city. The first two days were also great because I was winning on every single table/slot machine I played. The time flied by really quick until I had to go to Rio and register.

After I received my pass I went to check out DK’s charity poker tournament. I did not pre-register online but was able to get in and play as they had a few spots left. Poker was a lot of fun, I didn’t do too well and finished 30th… Should have been more patient. One all-in in the wrong time killed me. It was a pleasure to play with all the affiliates, publishers and advertisers. At first it was a little awkward to get the conversations started, but after a while people started to have friendly conversations.

Charity poker event is definitely a good place to get to know people and I we had a few good conversation with Jonathan Volk, Jon, Lisa, and other affiliates. There are also a lot of interesting people watching and hanging around the tables. It was a pleasure to meet DK, Brian LaFrance, Ruben Orozco, Geoffrey Nuval, John Chow, Andrew Wee, Jim Kukral and many, many more great people. There are just too many to list in one post. Anyway, in case you are thinking to register for the event in the future, go for it. Awesome game, networking with great people and of course good cause.

After the tournament was over and all the good SEO/Affiliate Marketing/Management Strategies/etc discussions were over I went out with my wife.

She was waiting patiently and taking great pictures all this time. This was the last day when the weather was nice so it worked really well for us. We still did not know Vegas and just walked around stepping into every place that looked appealing. Had a good dinner, walked around Bellagio, Planet Hollywood area and ended up in Prive club. The club was decent, but we had a lot of fun. We stayed up really late and I ended up missing some keynotes the next day.

I tried going to bed earlier and just have less fun in the next two days, which worked pretty good. I was at the conference most of the time. It was a great learning and networking experience. I met a lot of people. Everybody was super nice. I was expecting some people to be jerks, but even the most popular bloggers/affiliates were really friendly and some didn’t even mind sharing some really useful information.

Popular bloggers/affiliates were everywhere. Some were speaking, some were just walking around the conference, sitting next to me on the keynotes and others were just sitting chatting with the affiliate managers on the show floor. It was pretty interesting to meet everybody (still quite a few that I missed ).

It was nice talking to all the Affiliate Managers and clear the questions that I had. All seemed to be prepared to answer my questions since I am sure most of the affiliates had similar ones. The trade floor was full, there were so many attendees and networks.

It was fun, I was walking from room to room and at the end of every day my legs hurt from so much walking. In case you are planning to go for the first time, get yourself a pair of comfortable shoes.

There were many parties after the conference. Some were thrown by affiliate networks while others were more general and anybody could attend. I really enjoyed meetup 202 and met quite a few people there as well. There were a few tips here and there and some were really great.

The weather started to change towards the last days of the event. It was actually raining for the last 4 days of my trip. We did not walk around anymore but still had fun and went to some other affiliate parties.

Well, I hope this is enough for a recap. I want to write more, but I may end up being removed from google for 50mb blog post that takes an hour to load. After all, positive user experience is #1 priority of this blog, right? Now I totally understand why most of the affiliate bloggers have a post for every day of the event. Anyway, Affiliate Summit is a great event. I learned a lot! I met a lot of great people! I had a lot of fun! What else do you need? As for now, I am still waiting for the missed keynotes. I would love to go over the videos of the keynotes that I was not able the attend.

I took a lot of pictures and I hope I can sort out the business cards and associate faces with names. Now I want to list some of the people shown in the pictures above. Please remind me if we met, took a picture, you are not listed and I will edit the post.

1) Jonathan Volk. It was a pleasure playing poker with Jonathan. I just wish better luck to him and myself in the next tournament. He is a super affiliate and writes useful posts on his blog frequently. You can check it out at www.JonathanVolk.com and follow him on twitter @jonathanvolk.

2) DK. I would like to thank DK for the tournament, it was great to see the presentation on killer facebook campaigns and great to meet him. Stop by his blog at www.PurposeInc.com and follow him on twitter @purposeinc.

3) John Chow. I met John by the bar and just took a picture, had a small conversation. He is one of the most popular bloggers, which you can read it at www.JohnChow.com. Follow him on twitter @johnchow.

4) Jim Kukral. Jim is a moderator at ASW and you can read his blog at www.JimKukral.com. Follow him on twitter @jimkukral.

5) Andrew Wee. Andrew is a popular blogger/affiliate from Singapore. Read his blog at www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com. Follow him on twitter @andrewwee.

6) Bryn Youngblut. I didn’t meet him personally, but played poker at the next table. Was hoping to catch up at the event. Read his blog at Bryn.me. Follow him on twitter @brynyoungblut.

7) Nicky Cakes. Congratulate him for winning the award, he is officially affiliate of the year now. Nicky was sitting at a4d booth and we just took a few pictures. You can check out his blog at www.NickyCakes.com. Follow him on twitter @nickycakes.

8 ) Murray Newlands. He is an Australian blogger/affiliate and won another award. Read his blog at www.MurrayNewlands.com and follow him on twitter @murraynewlands.

9) Jeremy Shoemaker. I didn’t get a chance to catch him at the event, just listened to his answers on killer facebook campaigns. Most of the time people just asked facebook guys on why their ad platform is so unstable and approves ads at one time but not the other. Anyway, Shoemoney is one of the most popular affiliate blogs and you can check it out here www.Shoemoney.com and follow him on twitter @shoemoney.

10) Dr. Ngo. One of the top affiliates who doesn’t really blog. However, you can still follow him on twitter – @dr_ngo.

11) Wes Mahler. The guy behind tracking 202. Read his blog at www.WesMahler.com and follow him on twitter @wesmahler.

12) Ian Fernando. He is a blogger and affiliate, has a lot of good things to say, so read his blog at www.IanFernando.com and follow him on twitter @ianternet.

Pfff… At first I wanted to add all of the blogs that I follow, but the post is getting way too long. Perhaps next time.

At last, I want to thank Dennis Yu for the help with getting to Affiliate Summit West 2010.

Another thank you goes to Harry Tamacas Perla – CEO of QwikMedia for the party.

The last thank you goes to you for reading the entire post.

ASW10 was just great! Hope to attend ASE10 as well, but we’ll see! I better stop writing now… 5 hours later… Its time to sort out business cards and all the cool pictures I took. I hope you enjoyed the post.

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Affiliate Summit West 2010 is over, still in Vegas

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Other — rasim

Affiliate Summit West 2010 is over. It was a pleasure and great experience being here. I am still in Vegas for a few days. There are still some places I need to check out. I have been here for almost a week already but time flied by so fast that it seems like I have been here for just a few days.

I met quite a few affiliates and super affiliates, attended some interesting sessions and talked to a few networks. I am heading back home at the end of the week and will post more about ASW10.

As for now, I got to go and check out more of Vegas.

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Keyword research

Filed under: SEO & SEM — rasim

Keyword research is an important step for many things, even SEO and affiliate marketing as they can be a success and failure of the ad campaign and the whole site. Keyword rich domain names still have a lot of weight in SEO. Make sure to do your keyword research the best way.

There are a ton of tools that can be used for keyword research. I believe the most used one is the free keyword tool provided by adwords. It is free and useful but I am not relying on it anymore. It used to be THE tool for me and I thought that the results were somewhat precise, but they are not.

Couple years ago I was running Netflix campaigns and they were converting very well. Adwords traffic was converting at XXX% with just a simple blog page that had Netflix banner on it. This is when I decided to build a full blown site around Netflix. I used their API to build a simple movie related site, but they removed me from the campaign before I had a chance to finish. I did a basic keyword research on google’s keyword tool, and it showed pretty good numbers for “online movies rent”, which made me buy onlinemoviesrent.com. As of today, I didn’t really finish the site, but have some content there. I rank decent for the keyword (6-8 on the page 1 for this month), however, out of 354 visitors from google this month, only 1 was for actual “online movies rent”. This is just an example, but make sure that you do as much keyword research as possible before investing time in the site. Don’t rely on 1 tool and if possible, use as many as possible, including 1-2 paid ones of your choice. There are a few popular ones, such as keyword discovery, semrush, wordtracker, wordze, keyword spy, etc… You can find most of them on page 1 of google and they usually provide free trials or free top 10 results so you can evaluate and chose the one you like the best.

A lot of affiliates are moving to media buys these days, but I still like ppc traffic the most. Sure, google will suggest you some keywords that you need, but you can get 5 times more targeted traffic if you find a good tool and put more long tail keywords that have less competition. I used to test with google, then expand to yahoo and other ppc sources to get more traffic, but now I check for more keywords before exploring other traffic sources.

Anyway, do your keyword research! Let us know which one you love the most and why.

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Las Vegas, Affiliate Summit West 2010

Filed under: Other — rasim

As I wrote before, this would be my first time going to Vegas. I am leaving early, actually in about 24 hours and will arrive on Thursday, January 14 early in the morning and will be staying in new planet hollywood westgate towers. I hope that I get my tickets to ASW and give myself enough days to explore the city and win/lose some money.

As it gets closer to the event, I start seeing more and more parties by affiliates and networks. All of them are RSVP, you can see most of them in Nickycakes ASW party list here. You may also register for Meetup202 here, which is probably going to be fun and full of affiliate marketers as well. I am still thinking which ones to pick and can’t tell for sure if I am going to attend any of them.

Anyway, in case you are getting to Vegas earlier and feel like gambling a bit or just meet and have a drink, contact me using this form or just post a comment with your name and phone number (I am not going to post it).

Well, I hope it is going to be a lot of fun, as for now, I still got a bag to pack and get my cameras ready.

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Focus on work, stop wasting time

Filed under: Other — rasim

One of the biggest challenges of working from home is time management. Even since I left my job, my schedule got all screwed up. Even though I stay more at the computer, I actually work less. There are too many distractions and removing them should be the primary goal.

My #1 source of wasted time was checking my stats. I was checking my adsense, azoogle, cj, adwords, yahoo marketing, etc. accounts A LOT. After a while I just had them opened in a separate browser window and F5 every half an hour. That is a big time waste and don’t do it unless you are trying to optimize your campaign by studying conversion for a particular time of the day. Now I just check my stats at 12:00-12:10am every day, spend 10 minutes studying and tracking the conversions and done.

My #2 distractions were instant messengers. I generally use skype, icq, msn and aim. Sometime I would start a conversation with a client/friend/relative and talk most of the day. Not anymore… brb, away and offline statuses are there for me now, adding another hour or so of work time every day.

Email was #3 in my list. Now I try to check it only twice a day, which is more than enough – the first thing in a morning and the last thing before I go to bed. This saves me a lot of time as well.

#4 on my list is web – youtube, blogs, digg, etc… I am still trying to do something about it. I try to check those while I have lunch, but still get carried away sometimes… Not to mention that I just don’t feel too motivated on certain days and start checking these again… and again… Still a big time waste for me, but I am hoping to limit myself to 30 minutes a day while having my lunch.

#5 source is the general environment. Even though I have a separate office, I find it harder to focus since it is still at home. I can just get up and go grab some snacks or turn on the TV for the news on the background. All of these are the distractions.

#6 is my phone. Usually people don’t call during a day time, but when they are off work, I am still working. Putting my phone in silent mode helps.

These are the main reasons, however, a lot of time I just don’t have enough motivation. I still try to work, but I am not as productive. Usually after forcing myself to work and after a couple of hours I get into code/design/whatever and forget that I was not motivated. The day ends up being productive, unless something from the list above gets on the way. For instance, if I get myself focusing on work and an im window pops up, I end up chatting for a few minutes… Then it takes another hour to get back and remember where I was in code and get myself motivated again. buagh… that’s when I get frustrated and can’t get anything done. This is why I usually can’t be reached in any way any time I am working now. Hopefully I can get back to being super productive like I was before by eliminating these distractions.

Focus on one thing at a time. A lot of times I can’t get crap done (or at least it seems that everything stands still) because I try to focus on too many things at once. I code project on one screen, do some research on the other, looking for something else on my laptop, etc. Now I just focus on one thing at a time. Usually after checking my email in the morning, I set a goal of what I intend to get done by the end of the day. This helps to keep the frustration down since I don’t overload myself and motivation up since I know exactly what I need to get done. If I finish early, I just take my time doing something else and end up being super productive.

Working at home is not easy. Set your goals, eliminate the distractions that stand on the way and get motivated. Doesn’t sound complicated, but I couldn’t get anything done by the end of the day without it.

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